ISBN 978-1-906742-11-9

Irish poet Niall McDevitt confronts taboo subjects such as unemployment, alienation, poverty, immigration etc. not with confessions but with parables. Art—and the artistic genius of London—is ringingly affirmed. Here we depart from the ‘whatever you say, say nothing’ school. McDevitt is a maverick in the David Gascoyne/John Wieners/Michael Hartnett line.

b/w is politico-religious, a 100 page temple. Not only is a super-eloquent voice given to the underclass—‘major religions cultures histories in their bloods’—but to the McWorld vs. Jihad era. The poems are always about more than they are about, suggestive of the zeitgeist. His is not a brick-by-brick London but a London of the psychosphere, densely populated with genies, spies, artists, prostitutes et al on their chosen edges. A suite of mystical songs to ‘Sophia’ offsets the eviscerating satires. The Queen’s English is shadowed by Pidgin English. Political correctness is trashed, not from the right but from the left. Shakespeare, Blake, Rimbaud, Yeats are the city psychopomps. This is a unique book: Judeo-Apache, avant-folk, urban sha-manic. Read it with drum.

Niall McDevitt travelled through 23 European countries with a guitar and tent, including Corsica ‘The Island of Beauty’. Returning to London, McDevitt worked as an actor/ musician in Neil Oram’s 24-hour play The Warp, Ken Campbell’s Pidgin Macbeth, and John ‘Crow’ Constable’s The Southwark Mysteries.

For radio, he was resident Pidgin poet/translator on John Peel’s Home Truths, and has featured in Bespoken Word, The Robert Elms Show, The Verb, The Poet of Albion, and also such Resonance 104.4FM shows as Mining for Gold and Lost Steps.

As activist, McDevitt has campaigned to secure the future of the Rimbaud/Verlaine House at 8 Royal College Street, and for the release of poet Saw Wai from Insein prison in Burma. He leads epic psychogeographical walks through London esp. Shakespeare, Blake, Rimbaud, Yeats.